We just stepped away from the Grand Opera House, and now you are standing in an area that holds the ghosts of York's medieval past. Look around you. Today, the streets are open, but if we could peel back the layers of time, you would be standing at the entrance to the Water Lanes.
These were three narrow medieval streets leading right from Castlegate down to the waterfront of the River Ouse. Imagine stepping into an alleyway that looked very much like the Shambles, which we walked through earlier. They were lined with jettied buildings, hanging heavily over the narrow street below until the opposing rooftops nearly touched.
In the nineteenth century, people simply called them First, Middle, and Far Water Lane. But their roots go much deeper into York's Viking past. Back in the twelfth century, they had names like Kergate, Thrush Lane, and Hertergate. That suffix, gate, comes from the Old Norse word gata, meaning street. Kergate comes from a Scandinavian word for marshy ground, and Hertergate meant the street of the stag.
To Victorian artists like John Ruskin and the early photography pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot, these lanes were incredibly romantic. They loved drawing and photographing the ramshackle, leaning structures. But the reality of living inside those leaning walls was very different. The Water Lanes were notorious slums. They held the city's highest rates of poverty and crime. Police reports from the era are filled with terrible offenses, ranging from muggings to murder. There was even a bizarre case of a lady who visited a house on Water Lane to have her fortune told, only to find that her money had been smoothly stolen from her right during the reading. I suppose she did not see that coming.
The unsanitary conditions were the true tragedy of the Water Lanes. When a devastating cholera epidemic struck York in 1832, a full tenth of everyone who died in the city lived in these three small streets. Investigators later found that toilets were almost non-existent. Residents had to sneak into their neighbors' yards or simply use the street itself.
Because of this immense suffering, the City Corporation finally decided to tear the lanes down. The demolition began in 1852, widening First Water Lane into what is now King Street. The clearance lasted decades, finishing after the Castlegate Improvement Scheme of 1875, and eventually replacing the lanes with Cumberland Street and Friargate. Sadly, the displaced families were just pushed into other overcrowded districts like Hungate and Walmgate, bringing their struggles with them.
While the lanes are mostly gone, a few pieces survived down by the waterfront opening, known as King's Staith. Down by the river, you can still find Cumberland House, the Kings Arms Pub, and a rebuilt Tudor building called The Ship, all marking the very edges of these infamous medieval alleys.
If you wish to explore the municipal area here, keep in mind it is open Monday through Friday from eight in the morning to six in the evening, and closed on weekends. Picture the leaning timbers and shadowy alleys of the past one last time, and let's take a short walk over to the York Institute of Art, Science and Literature.
